Shadows Across the Playing Field

by Shashi Tharoor

  The crowds had been energized by the exciting ODI series, and there was an additional factor at play: the Government of Pakistan had done something it had refused to do after 1955, and allowed thousands of Indians to cross the border on ‘cricket visas’. They were greeted effusively by ordinary Pakistanis; to be an Indian in Lahore or Karachi those days was to be offered free rides, discounted meals and purchases, and overwhelming hospitality. It was said, not entirely in jest, that large numbers of Pakistanis were going about pretending to be Indians in order to avail of these benefits for themselves. The ghosts of Kargil were buried once and for all by the cricket tour of 2003-04.

  India picked up in the first Test at Multan where it had left off at Lahore, scoring an emphatic win by an innings and 52 runs. The centrepiece of a mammoth Indian first innings score of 675 for 5 declared was a monumental 309 by Virender Sehwag, the first Indian Test triple-century, scored off just 375 balls, with 39 fours and 6 sixes. Pakistan’s first triple hundred had come within six years of its ascension to Test status, and Sri Lanka’s within fifteen, but India had played 72 years of test cricket without any player looking remotely like getting close to 300. Whether it was because Indians didn’t have the stamina, or because the classical Test batsmanship so prized in India rarely permitted very rapid scoring, or whether it was simply that those with the talent and the ability to make those kinds of runs always found themselves tempered by the responsibility of anchoring the innings and/or saving the side, the fact remained that India’s highest Test score had always been the lowest of the major Test playing nations. In Sehwag India had finally found a batsman with the courage to go for his shots and the talent to build a big innings in the process. (It did not surprise me that India’s second triple century, its only other one to date, came also from Sehwag, four years later.) Pakistan, in reply, could only muster 407 and 216. It was the most comprehensive drubbing India had ever inflicted on them.

  The tables were turned immediately, though, in the second Test. Despite a sparkling century by Yuvraj Singh and Sehwag scoring 39 and 90, India lost by 9 wickets, centuries by Imran Farhat and Inzamam sealing the win on a seaming Lahore pitch that was well-exploited by Umar Gul. The third test, however, was a repeat of the first, except this time it was Rahul Dravid with 270, and not Sehwag, who fell first ball for a duck, who took the match away from Pakistan. Victory by an innings and 131 runs actually improved upon the margin of the first Test.

  With the positive atmosphere engendered by this series, the return engagement in India the following year had to be an anticlimax. (A couple of unmemorable multi-team ODI tournaments, the Asia Cup in Sri Lanka in July and the Videocon Cup in the Netherlands, of all places, in August intervened without producing anything worth writing about, other than the sight of a 10,000- strong sellout crowd in Amsterdam to watch India play Pakistan.) With a home defeat still rankling, Pakistan had a great deal at stake, and the auguries were not propitious. Pakistan justifiably refused to play a Test match at Ahmedabad in Gujarat, citing the 2002 riots there, which led the hosts to schedule a sixth ODI there instead. Pakistan’s fiercest and fastest bowler, Shoaib Akhtar, was unavailable as a result of injury, and India, by then considered a close second to Australia amongst the world’s best teams, began the series as the overwhelming favourites. It is not a label they have tended to wear very well, as events once again were to prove.

  The Tests promised much but never quite fulfilled expectations. The first Test in Mohali was drawn, India proving unable to force a win after amassing a first-innings lead of 204 (that man Sehwag 173) and reducing Pakistan to 10 for 3 in the second. The second Test, at Calcutta, went more according to script, Pakistan having no answer to centuries in each innings by Dravid and ten wickets in the match by Kumble, India winning by 195 runs. Younus Khan’s 147 in the first innings, however, showed what he might be capable of, and he built on it in the third Test at Bangalore, hitting 267 (with Inzamam making 184) in a first-innings score of 570 which put the match out of India’s reach. Sehwag scored 201 in a convincing Indian reply of 449, but Younus’ rapid 84 not out then allowed Inzamam to declare at 261 for 2 and bowl India out for a wretched 214, sealing victory by 168 runs. Pakistan had squared a series they were expected to lose.

  Worse was to follow for the Indians in the six ODIs which followed, and which revealed the young Pakistani team at its best. They had already demonstrated their potential in Calcutta in November 2004, at a one-off ODI match marking the BCCI’s Platinum Jubilee, when a coruscating century from Salman Butt had helped them overhaul India’s formidable 292 for 6. Now, five months later, they had an entire series to show their quality. India flattered to deceive, winning the first two ODIs, thanks notably to centuries by Sehwag and Dravid (and five wickets by Tendulkar) at the first ODI in Kochi, and a whirlwind 148 by their new star, wicketkeeper-batsman Mahendra Singh Dhoni, at the second ODI in Vishakapatnam. The next four, however, went to Pakistan, the Indians proving unable to handle the bowling of Naved-ul-Hasan (six wickets at the third ODI in Jamshedpur, 3 in the fifth at Kanpur) and the entertaining batting of Salman Butt (101 at the third ODI in Jamshedpur) and Shahid Afridi (102 at the fifth ODI in Kanpur). The Pakistani triumph in India was a fitting riposte to India’s victory in Pakistan the previous year.

  India were back in Pakistan the very next year, the two boards clearly not attaching much value to the theory that less frequent contests generate more interest. The scheduling, though, left a great deal to be desired. The first two Tests were drawn, with much time being lost due to fog, predictable at that time of year. In the first, at Lahore, Younus Khan resumed where he had left off at Bangalore, scoring 199; three other Pakistani batsmen hit hundreds in a total of 679 for 7. In reply, Sehwag and makeshift opener Dravid nearly broke the world record by putting on 410 for the first wicket, Sehwag’s dismissal for 254 essentially ending the match. (Of the 12 players who got to bat, six made hundreds.) The second Test was on another Faisalabad flat-top: this time Pakistan’s 588 (with two centuries) was matched by India’s 603 (ditto), then Younus made 194 in a second-innings of 490 for 8, the Pakistanis declining to set India a target they could have chased down on a shirtfront. The first two Tests saw 2,791 runs scored for just 36 wickets, a rate that would have produced average scores of 780 all out in each innings, had time permitted. That put all the onus on the third Test if Pakistan were to restore their home-series reputation, dented by India the last time around. A hat-trick in Irfan Pathan’s first over saw Pakistan reeling at 0 for 3, but they recovered (thanks to keeper Kamran Akmal) from the depths of 39 for 6 to post 245 and bowled India out for 238. The second innings was a different story altogether. With every single one of the first seven batsmen scoring a half-century (and Faisal Iqbal making 139), Pakistan posted a remarkable 599 for 7 and bowled India out for an insipid 265, Yuvraj standing alone amongst the ruins with 122. Pakistan won the Test series 1-0.

  The ODIs, however, went the other way. Though the Duckworth-Lewis method gave Pakistan an unconvincing victory in the first ODI despite scoring fewer runs than India, the next four all went to the visitors by large margins (7 wickets, 5, 5 and 8 wickets, respectively). Yuvraj Singh, and to a lesser extent Dhoni, were in irresistible form with the bat, and the Pakistanis who had excelled in India somehow proved unable to recapture the magic in front of their own home spectators.

  Within two months the two sides were at it again, this time for a DLF Cup in yet another Gulf cricketing venue, Abu Dhabi, where they shared the two match series 1-1. Surprisingly, given the scheduling propensities of the two boards, they did not play each other again for the rest of the year, and in early 2007 each team made an ignominious exit from the World Cup in the West Indies, before being able to qualify for the stage at which they might have played each other. It was widely said at the time that for each, the only consolation in their humiliating exits – Pakistan at the hands of Ireland, India done in by Bangladesh – was that the other had gone out at the same time. For one of the two subcontin
ental rivals to have gone home in those circumstances, with the other carrying on in the World Cup, would have been simply too galling for fans on either side of the border to bear.

  In July 2007, the two sides, both touring the British Isles, were slated to play a one-off ODI in Glasgow for the evocatively named Future Friendship Cup. But the Scottish weather ensured that the match was abandoned without a ball being bowled. In September, however, the two sides met in the final of the inaugural Twenty20 World Championship in South Africa, where a thrilling match ended in a last-over Indian victory. This event, which inaugurated a new form of the old game to the utter delight of TV-watching fans in the subcontinent, was still fresh in the minds of the spectators when Pakistan made the now-annual return visit for the fourth test tour in as many years. Unlike on the previous occasion, India held on to the ODI series, winning 3-2; all the matches were settled by decisive margins.

  The three Tests were a mirror image of India’s last visit to Pakistan. India won the first, in Delhi, by six wickets, then comfortably drew the next two, at Kolkata and Bangalore, without making much of an effort to force a result in either. Both tests featured Indian scores in excess of 600, with double-centuries for Wasim Jaffer and Sourav Ganguly and centuries for V.V.S. Laxman, Yuvraj and Irfan Pathan (who had begun his international career batting at number 10). The omission of Sehwag against his favourite opponents, for the absurd reason of his poor form in ODIs, probably deprived that adventurous player of an opportunity to score his second Test triple-century on a dead wicket, a year sooner than he eventually did. Pakistan’s new discovery was the veteran Misbah-ul-Haq, who within a year of his recall had established himself as the side’s outstanding batsman, while the team suffered from the reluctance of stand-in captain Younus Khan to assume the responsibility thrust upon him by injury to the official appointee, Shoaib Malik. A dramatic last hour on a crumbling pitch nearly gave the third test a result, as Kumble reduced Pakistan to 162 for 7 in pursuit of 374, but a draw was a more fitting conclusion to an uninspiring series. At a time in world cricket where most Tests end in victories, the fact that four of the last six India-Pakistan encounters were draws is a worrying reminder of the bad old days.

  Taking Stock

  In early 2008, India staged the first edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), a glitzy twenty-over tournament featuring eight teams representing Indian city franchises. The tournament, paying million-dollar salaries to star players and bedecked with American-style cheerleaders and associated razzmatazz, was a huge success, garnering large television ratings and sparking the enthusiasm of an after-work crowd, including many who had not regularly followed the traditional game. The IPL had clearly come to stay, and to many it represented the future of the game of cricket amidst the hustle and bustle of a time-conscious twenty-first century world.

  Though this is not the place to discuss that issue, in one respect the IPL offered a glimpse of the future that recaptured some of the best of the past. As one who began watching cricket in Bombay as a child 45 years ago, I have come to lament the unsportsmanlike chauvinism of our crowds, whose inability to applaud good cricket except when Indians are playing it – and especially not when Pakistanis are performing – has become a national disgrace. (Which Indian cricket-lover can ever forget the failure to applaud good Pakistani batting during the World Cup in 1996, or the shameful riots in the Eden Gardens during the Test against Pakistan in 1999?) In India these days, a fine innings by a Pakistani player is greeted with a stony silence even by a crowd numbering tens of thousands, while homegrown players are cheered with a raucousness that is sometimes out of proportion to their merit. The IPL showed us all, though, that it doesn’t have to be that way. Thanks to the mixture of nationalities in each of the IPL teams, partisanship has suddenly lost its chauvinist flavour. Few things in my cricket-watching experience have been as enthralling as the same Eden Gardens crowd, 100,000 strong, roaring in support as Shoaib Akhtar came steaming in on his debut for Kolkata against Delhi. The sight of a Pakistani fast bowler being cheered by an Indian crowd as he demolished the likes of Sehwag and Gambhir is not one we are likely to see repeated in a Test match, but it’s heartwarming to see Indian crowds put national chauvinism aside in the interests of backing their mongrel city teams.

  In the IPL, the past poses no impediment to the future. But that has not been quite as true for the subcontinent as a whole, which has for nearly six decades seemed a prisoner of the past, handcuffed to a pessimist’s reading of history.

  Muslims and Hindus (as well as followers of many other creeds) have shared the same civilizational space on the subcontinent for over a thousand years. Islam came to India as early as the eighth century AD, to Sindh in the north with the Arab armies of Mohammed bin Qasim and to Kerala in the south with traders and travellers across the Arabian sea. For the most part the two big faiths co-existed for centuries; though persecution and violence were not unknown, few saw religion as the primary determinant of their loyalties. In the great revolt of 1857 against the British, Hindus and Muslims rose as one against the foreign occupier, rallying under the banner of the last Mughal king. But the Hindu-Muslim unity seen in that revolt led the alarmed British to adopt a policy of ‘divide and rule’ which sowed mutual suspicions and hatreds. The policy found its culmination, ninety years later, in Partition.

  I raise the issue only because it is impossible to analyze India- Pakistan cricket without taking into account the question of national chauvinism. For many Pakistanis, India is anathema: if it weren’t, what was the point in separating from it at Partition? For most Indians, Pakistan is equally so, a state founded on religious intolerance. Such visceral mutual antipathy, even if it does not always bubble up to the surface, underlies much of the tension in the India-Pakistan cricketing relationship. For many years now the talk has been of war, militancy, terrorism, and now the nuclear threat. And yet history entwines the two countries with bonds of paradox. India derives its name from the river Indus, which flows in Pakistan. The Partition of 1947 created a state for India’s Muslims, but there are more Muslims in secular India than in Islamic Pakistan. The two countries share common languages, costumes, customs and cuisines; when their citizens meet abroad, they slip easily into camaraderie. (Many is the time a Pakistani cabbie in New York has refused to take money from an Indian passenger, saying only, ‘you are my brother’.) Indian films, music and clothes remain wildly popular across the border, and Pakistani cricketers and musicians are lionized in India. A national of either country visiting the other is soon overwhelmed with the hospitality showered upon him by anyone discovering where he is from. Pakistani cricketers who routinely exchange words of advice with each other in Urdu in front of other countries’ players are forced to bite their tongues when playing India, for fear of being understood. When a Pakistani cricketer wishes to relax, it is usually in front of an Indian Bollywood film. And yet these are two countries whose soldiers have frequently shot at each other, where border tensions have erupted into war, and where the result of a cricket match can prompt a soldier to unleash a volley of celebratory or intimidatory fire on the Line of Control. Above all, this is a region where the fomenting of terrorism in India by Pakistan and (in Pakistani eyes) the oppression of Muslims by India creates in each side a moral obligation to teach the perpetrators a lesson on the cricket field. No other cricketing rivalry in the world has to contend with such a perverse mixture of elements sharpening the keen edge of competition between them.

  For Indians like myself, perhaps the most disquieting development of the last fifteen years has been the rise of religious intolerance on both sides of the border. I am reconciled to it in Pakistan: after all, a state founded as a homeland for Muslims can hardly be surprised if some of its adherents take Islamism to an extreme. But I find it utterly impossible to accept on my own side. The whole point about India is that it is a pluralist republic, not a Hindu state; the thought that some Hindu chauvinists want to reduce my India to a mirror image of Pakistan, a state
of and for its religious majority, fills me with horror. I am proud of the 30 Muslim cricketers who have played Tests for India, and of the four Muslims who have captained it; that is what sets us apart from others, especially from Pakistan. The suspicions of disloyalty that some petty Indian political leaders have directed at Indian Muslim cricketers fill me with revulsion.

  A few years ago, the New York Times treated its readers to an essay by an American travel writer on his experience of being a ‘cricket heathen’ in India. After mildly amusing descriptions of his discovery of the sport and the passions it stirred in the Indian soul, the author, Michael Y. Park, concluded with an anecdote: ‘Even when I tried to escape civilisation deep into the Great Indian (Thar) Desert in the northwest, near the border with Pakistan, cricket dominated conversation. I was on a three-day camel trek, and my camel driver ... played only camel polo and had never seen a professional cricket match because he’d never watched television. But ... this man who had never been more than 20 miles from the fairy-tale fort of Jaisalmer and who had never heard of nuclear bombs or Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, rattled off statistics about the national team and details of the players’ private lives. He even worked in a few disparaging remarks about the Pakistani team. (He) noted my astonishment. ‘You have to understand,’ (he) said, spitting out a gob of betel nut and saddling up his camel. ‘Indians are crazy about this cricket.’